Autry Denson to Coach Charleston-Southern

Autry Denson will make one last run in South Bend – not on the hallowed grounds of Notre Dame Stadium this time, but down Angela Boulevard on his way to the airport. Notre Dame’s all-time leading rusher and erstwhile running backs coach has accepted an offer to be the head coach of FCS Charleston-Southern, according to numerous reports. While recruitniks often gnashed their teeth over Denson’s inability to garner attention from elite backs, there’s no argument against his production as a coach; all he did was turn out elite backs, whether it was CJ Prosise, Josh Adams, or the reinvented Dexter Williams we saw this past season. Even Jafar Armstrong, after a season as a receiver, stepped in and made a difference this season. Deon McIntosh came out of nowhere last season to register 368 yards and 5 touchdowns. The guy can coach.

He was also an excellent representative of the university. Denson was the consummate teammate in his playing days, accepting a move from defensive back without argument; obviously that worked out really well, but he couldn’t have had any idea at the time. As a coach, he has built a reputation for fairness, kindness, integrity, and faith. From how you hear people talk about him I think he had a steadying influence in the locker room, and that will be missed.

Who Could Replace Him?

We’ll take a quick look at a few names that could potentially step in for Denson. Pete Sampson tweeted the other day that if Denson left, we should “expect Notre Dame to move quickly” to hire a replacement. One might assume that Brian Kelly already had some names in mind, and we won’t have to wait long to find out whether any of them are one of these guys. I took a look at some guys who are associated with good rushing performance and/or recruiting prowess. I also left out guys I consider complete pie-in-the-sky, like Alabama’s Joe Pannunzio and Clemson’s co-OC Tony Elliott. Much like head coaches, position coaches at Tier 1 programs aren’t going to make a lateral move absent some kind of compelling context.

Without further ado, then, the list of guys I would kick the tires on if I was Brian Kelly:

Tony Alford – Ohio State

We’ll start with a familiar face. Kelly’s lone holdover from Charlie Weis’s staff left for Columbus to burnish his resume for a potential head coaching offer that never came. He knows how to coach the position, he knows the school, and he knows how to sell it. With Urban Meyer out, would Alford consider a return? Would Notre Dame be willing to step him up from his $500K salary? Would his AHC title come with him, even though Mike Elston already holds the AHC title now? There are obstacles, but it’s not totally impossible.

Thomas Brown – South Carolina

Brown has bounced around a bit, but he’s also logged three top 20 S&P+ rushing performances in the last five seasons; in that time he coached Melvin Gordon at Wisconsin, Nick Chubb at Georgia, and Travis Homer at Miami. South Carolina snapped him up quickly after Manny Diaz fired him at Miami, but we know how much of an impediment “was just hired” is in the modern coach movement era. He has shown that he’s an excellent recruiter, from drawing four-star Georgia safety Arrington Farrar to Wisconsin to landing a couple of five-stars at Miami. Brown is from Georgia and played for Georgia, and aside from the one season in Wisconsin has spent his whole career south of the Mason-Dixon, so he can relate to Southern recruits. If you want coaching and recruiting chops, you could do a lot worse than Brown.

Charlie Huff – Mississippi State

Huff put himself on the national map at Penn State when protege Saquon Barkley ran wild in the Big Ten. He followed former Penn State OC Joe Moorhead to Mississippi State and picked up right where he left off, coaching S&P+’s 6th-ranked rushing offense in 2018. He has worked with Ralph Friedgen, PJ Fleck, James Franklin, and now Moorhead, which is a pretty solid group of mentors. Since 2014, 247 credits Huff with landing 16 four-stars and two five-stars. That’s some serious production on the recruiting trail. He holds an AHC title at Mississippi State, so he probably wouldn’t be the cheapest option, but there’s a lot of things to like about Huff.

Derrick Nix – Ole Miss

We’ll stay in the Magnolia State for a moment… Nix was a star running back at Southern Mississippi around the turn of the century before joining the Golden Eagles staff, in which capacity he was responsible for Southern Mississippi’s first 2,000-yard season in 20 years. In ten seasons at Ole Miss he has put up some solid rushing performances, including the 15th-ranked S&P+ rush offense this year, and his backs have notched three of Ole Miss’s ten best seasons ever. He has a solid history on the recruiting trail, landing a baker’s dozen of blue-chip recruits at Ole Miss. He’s from Alabama and aside from one year with the Atlanta Falcons in quality control he has spent his entire playing and coaching career in Mississippi; I don’t know how likely it is he would leave the South at this point, but it’s worth asking.

Andre Powell – Pitt

Powell has quietly churned out a pretty good list of alumni through multiple career stops. He has coached running backs and special teams for Virginia, Clemson, Maryland, and Pitt; among his pupils on that career path are Tiki Barber, CJ Spiller, Stefon Diggs (as an all-conference return man), Lou Groza winner Brad Craddock, John Conner, and Qadree Ollison. The dude can coach. He’s the oldest guy on this list and his recruiting track record won’t blow you away, so that might be a bit of a concern. Still, there’s no question that the football side of it would be very well taken care of.

Thad Ward – Illinois

Ward had paid his dues, working up through a couple of FCS stops and then a couple of MAC programs before Lovie Smith hired him in 2016. He has been an active recruiter and I think he’d be fine in that respect, but more importantly, he is seriously Doing Good Things™ with Illinois’s running game. In his three seasons there he has improved their S&P+ rushing rank from 73rd to 60th to 9th. Their lead rusher this past season, Reggie Corbin, averaged 8.5 yards per carry, and as a group their backs averaged 7.4 yards per carry. That is… attractive. Just three years at a lower-tier Power 5 program (sorry, Illini fans) might be some cause for reservation, but it sure looks like he can get results.

Dark Horse Candidates

These are guys I liked but, for one reason or another, didn’t think of as realistic choices. I would put all of them in the “guys to keep tabs on” category.

Georgia’s Dell McGee has done excellent work in a short window in Athens; I normally would doubt his availability, but maybe if he doesn’t mesh with new OC James Coley… You can’t argue with the results that Wisconsin’s John Settle has produced, but he’s been with Paul Chryst at multiple stops and doesn’t seem that likely to leave… Similarly, Ohio’s Tim Albin has done some really good things in the MAC, but he’s been there with Frank Solich since 2005 and also worked with Solich at Nebraska. And he has the AHC/OC titles…

Virginia Tech’s Zohn Burden has done some good things in Blacksburg, but not quite good enough to pique my interest yet. I remain attentive, though… I really like what Anthony Jones did in Memphis in 2018, but his exposure to big-boy football is limited as he was a high school head coach in 2017. If he can keep that success going he’ll belong on future short lists… Jafar Williams, late of Maryland, logged S&P+’s 18th ranked rushing offense in 2018 but was a career receivers coach before last season. When he lands somewhere, we’ll see if he continues that success.

“Cronyism”

A quick note on the concern I’ve seen popping up on message boards lately that Kelly will hire a “crony” to replace Denson, since, you know, he’s so big on that… This is one of the most persistent and at the same time most wrong of the fan base’s criticisms of Kelly. Naturally, when Kelly was hired, he brought some of his Cincinnati staff with him. That’s what most guys do. From that transition forward, here are the changes Kelly has made:

Heading into this offseason, Brian Kelly has filled 22 assistant coach positions at Notre Dame. Fifteen of those 22 coaches, and six of the eight he’s hired since the end of the 2016 season, have no prior direct connection to him. Yes, some knew guys who worked for him – like Cooks and Elliott, who were both connected to Diaco before, and Denson, who worked for Martin at Miami-OH. Good luck finding head coaches who never hire someone with references. That’s completely normal. The fact that Kelly tabbed guys he had already worked with for seven out oftwenty-two hires hardly supports the rampant idea that he engages in cronyism. Please, let’s retire this one. He made some unfortunate decisions, and one galactically stupid one, based on knowing a guy. For the most part, though, he looks outside his tree, and he hires from within it at a standard rate.

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Sending good wishes to Coach Denson — a class act! As you said, it’s a tough loss from a coaching perspective as the RBs seemed to be well coached in recent years. However, it is a little odd that he has had difficulty recruiting highly ranked backs.

On the recruiting point, I think he has a very particular style that not everybody responds to. He’s an extremely faithful guy, which I’m not knocking, but not every kid is going to be hooked by daily text messages with Bible verses (hypothetically). I don’t think he tailored his approach much, which led to him not getting serious attention from a lot of kids. A lot of conjecture there by me, to be fair.

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4 months ago

hooks orpik

Interesting stuff. Does seem like, especially from results of who they brought in, you want a personality like Alford on the RB recruiting trail more than Denson.

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4 months ago

shark.run

I was thinking the same thing based on his comments in his announcement.

Offensive GAs are Aaron Coeling and Brandon Lemon. Coeling is an OL guy and Lemon is a WR guy. Regardless of their specialty, though, I think a first-timer would get swallowed up. We need someone who can run with the big boys on the recruiting trail.

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4 months ago

juicebox

Yeah, I’d like another ‘crootin’ stud. This just made me curious about the GAs.

Since you’ve done so much research, do you know where Saban hires most of his people from? Seems like he usually has about 3 spots a year to fill.

He uses the analyst roles to stash and evaluate guys, and he also has an operations person who keeps tabs on assistants all over the country.

All hail the Process.

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4 months ago

DrIck

Wimbush to UCF

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4 months ago

Irishchamp23

Yea that’s a little surprising isn’t it? Don’t they run a pass-happy spread offense? I mean obviously they can adjust to wimbush’s running ability and frankly it’ll be interesting to see what they can do with him. Can they put him in a great system where he’s more comfortable and he recovers his high school accuracy and improves immensely (unlikely) (and we all want to fire Kelly for not being capable of developing a QB properly) or not?

57.2% running the past two years for UCF, 24.8% of the carries coming from the quarterback position. Seems like a solid fit. Not super run-heavy but not pass happy at all.

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4 months ago

Irishchamp23

Thanks! That makes more sense. I guess I thought Milton McKenzie was more of a passer (he must just be a really good passer when he does pass). I wish the best for Wimbush. Hopefully he can get the nod and play well.

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4 months ago

hooks orpik

I hope so too. I saw betting lines saying PSU was the favorite for him to transfer to, but IMO that would have been a mistake and possibly have him benched after a few games if they didn’t go very well. Sort of looks like he’s learned the lesson of Golson and Zaire to transfer to a place without much stress, but yet still a top-25 caliber team. Very wise.

Also 3 straight QBs that grad transfer go to the state of Florida, @congrats to 2020 starting Miami QB Ian Book?@

Pretty sure that line was just because he had once been committed to Penn State. The same board had Rutgers as the second most likely destination, presumably because he’s from NJ. That, uh, seemed unlikely.

And poor Gummy VanGorder, the Forgotten QB toiling away bravely at Youngstown State. Although he was really a holder, amirite?

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4 months ago

hooks orpik

Hah, good call on MVG, tried to scrub all VanGorder’s from memory. Unfortunate for him, but sins of the father…..

(I thought PSU would have been good for Wimbush because they have an excellent MBA program.)